KITCHENER — It was a horrendous crash that echoed across the country, but 12 months later Sara Castillo will remember the tragedy with a quiet, private moment.

Castillo and her young son Mateo will go to her father’s grave in Kitchener’s Williamsburg Cemetery today to read a poem and spend a few quiet moments thinking about Juan Castillo.

One year ago on Feb. 6, her 56-year-old Nicaraguan-born father was among 10 farm labourers killed in a van crash at an intersection in Hampstead, near Wellesley. The driver of the cargo truck that struck them broadside was also killed.

As with dozens of other grieving relatives spread throughout Latin America and Canada, the one-year mark since one of deadliest crashes in Canadian history is bringing back painful memories for Castillo.

“The hurt is still there, it will always be there. That never goes away, no matter how much time has passed,” said Castillo, 30. “It’s been harder for us, the way we lost our dad. We didn’t get the chance to see him one last time before he left.”

The crash that killed Castillo and nine migrant workers from Peru as they drove home after a day of vaccinating chickens has been analyzed intensely, but produced few satisfying answers. A decision not to hold an inquest into the collision is a major disappointment, according to the union lobbying on the workers’ behalf.

Calls to change the intersection have also yielded nothing, says the farmer who owns the poultry barn the workers were leaving when they died.

Police investigators have only said the driver of the van, 45-year-old David Blancas-Hernandez of New Hamburg, failed to stop at a stop sign at the intersection of Perth Road 107 and Line 47.

With a standard G-class licence, he also wasn’t qualified to drive the 15-passenger van.

The collision also killed 38-year-old Christopher Fulton, the driver of an oncoming truck, who was on his way home to celebrate his wedding anniversary with his wife Teresa.

Of the three men who survived the crash, one, Javier Medina, has returned to Peru.

A second man, Juan Ariza, is still recovering in a London nursing home. Ariza had only been in Canada three days when the van crashed and is now hoping for permanent residency here.

Ariza can walk with the help of a cane, but still carries physical and emotional scars from the terrible crash.

“He still struggles with nightmares from the accident,” said Ariza’s friend and translator, Carlos Diaz. “He’s getting better, but it’s slow. He feels like an 80-year-old man. He can’t lift up his son.”

In the months since the crash, Ariza has been buoyed by the support he’s received from Canadians, including visits from Fulton’s widow, Diaz said.

The third survivor, Edgar Sulla-Puma, remains in a Hamilton hospital and is still severely affected. Because of a brain injury, he’s fed through a tube in his stomach and is unable to speak, according to his brother-in-law John Edwards.

Hospital staff are trying to help Sulla-Puma learn to walk again, while his family hopes he can be granted permanent residence status on humanitarian grounds. The cost of his care and therapy is being covered by the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board of Ontario, Edwards said.

Stan Raper, a national co-coordinator with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), said a full inquest could offer important answers into what led to the crash.

Specifically, the chief coroner ought to examine what role fatigue played, he said. But a statement by Ontario’s interim chief coroner Dan Cass indicating that there were no such plans is troubling, Raper said.

Cass said the coroner’s office investigated each death in tandem with police and the Ministry of Labour and has decided an inquest would not result in recommendations that could prevent similar deaths.

“We’re a little troubled by the statement that nothing can be learned from an inquest,” Raper said. “I certainly beg to differ. This is a sector that has high fatality rates and a lot of injuries every year.”

An inquest could shed light on the working conditions of Ontario’s agricultural workers, including how they’re transported, their hours of work and other safety issues, Raper said.

United Food and Commercial Workers Union president Wayne Hanley issued a statement vowing to continue lobbying the province to take action on the issue of migrant workers and farm labourers.

“On this sorrowful anniversary, we encourage all Ontario residents to remember those who were killed at Hampstead, and to press for changes to stop such a tragedy from ever happening again,” he said.

Albert Burgers, the co-owner of the Hampstead Poultry barn where the workers had been vaccinating chickens, said he still wonders what happened in the seconds leading up to the crash.

He speculates the late afternoon sun may have briefly blinded the van’s driver.

And he also wonders why there have been no new warning signs or slower speed limits posted at the rural intersection, which is within sight of his chicken barns. Traffic still whips through the rural crossroads at 80 km/h.

“How could he miss that stop sign? I guess nobody will ever know what really happened,” Burgers said.

“And they haven’t done anything on that intersection. They all studied it and wrote reports, but nothing happened.”

Castillo, meanwhile, says it’s wrong that it took such a tragedy for people to start asking questions about farm workers’ safety.

The company that employed her father, MARC poultry vaccination services, had a similar crash in 2004 when a van carrying nine employees ran a red light at an intersection in Hamilton and collided with a flatbed truck, killing three.

“It’s very tough to come to the realization that it’s been a year,” she said of the anguish of losing her father in the crash. “It feels like he’s still here. But every time I visit his (grave) stone, I know he’s gone.”